David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Chapter 35 Page 24

I put in this, on the spur of the moment, warned by the blank expression of his face — ‘to cancel my articles?’

What it cost me to make this proposal, nobody knows. It was like asking, as a favour, to be sentenced to transportation from Dora.

‘To cancel your articles, Copperfield?

Cancel?’

I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know where my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could earn them for myself. I had no fear for the future, I said — and I laid great emphasis on that, as if to imply that I should still be decidedly eligible for a son-in-law one of these days — but, for the present, I was thrown upon my own resources. ‘I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,’